1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method of cutting an organic membrane, and more specifically, to a method of cutting an organic membrane which comprises adhering or intimately adhering (to be referred to simply "adhering") the organic membrane to a frame or substrate and then cutting that part of the organic membrane which extends out of the frame or substrate (to be sometimes referred to as the frame or the like) along the frame or the like without generating foreign matter such as cut dust.
2. Description of the Prior Art
One example of an organic membrane to be adhered to a frame or the like is a pellicle used as a dust-preventing cover for a photomask or a reticle. Generally, the pellicle is obtained by taking up on a provision frame a thin film of nitrocellulose or ethyl cellulose, for example, formed on a glass plate by a spinner method or a pull-up method (by pulling up from a solution), the stretching the thin film over a pellicle frame, and cutting that part of the film which extends out of the frame along the frame. Cutting is usually effected by a knife, but laser may sometimes be used. In any case, cut dust inevitably occurs in knife cutting, and occurrence of burnt dust is inevitable in laser cutting. Such dusts, even minute ones, can be a problem in the process of producing semiconductor devices, above all in fields requiring rigorous dust-preventing measures, for example in a step of exposing resists. If, for example, the cut dust adheres to the pellicle, it is likely to fall at the time of mounting the pellicle on the reticle and to adhere to the circuit pattern. This may lead to the production of devices having unacceptable quality.